Anthropocene
an exhibit of photographs by Edward Burtynsky
highlighting the mark that man is leaving on the environment.

below: Lithium Mine #1, Salt Flats, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2017 . The Salar de Atacama is the largest salt flat in Chille, located in the driest non-polar desert in the world. This is also the world’s greatest source of lithium. The shades of yellow, green, and blue represent the different stages of lithium evaporation.

below: Uralkali Potash Mine #4, Berezniki Russia, 2017. This Russian mine includes about 3000 km of underground tunnels created by machines called combines used in the potash extraction process. These spaces are dark. The spiral patterns are left by the combines.

below: Morenci Mine #2, Clifton Arizona USA, 2012. Part of this photo shows the liquid reserves of waste left over from the copper extraction process. The marble like colours are the result of leached heavy metals. Copper smelting requires between 1500 and 3000 litres of water for every to of processed ore.

Two Canadian First Nations women, Jane Ash Poitras and Rebecca Belmore, have their art on display at the moment. Both women are concerned about the effects of history on their culture and heritage. Both mix politics into their art. How do you rise out of oppression while preserving your heritage? What are the issues surrounding acculturation and do you deal with them? But as you can see, they approach their art in very different ways.

At the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) are four paintings by Jane Ash Poitras (b. Fort Chipeywan Alberta 1951). Poitras is Cree. She was orphaned at the age of 6 and raised by a Catholic German woman in Edmonton. Before turning to art, she earned a BSc in microbiology.

below: ‘Buffalo Seed’, mixed media, 2004. Old black and white photos are used in this collage along with sunflower petals and fabulous colours of oil paint.

below: “Potato Peeling 101 to Ethnobotany 101”, Placed side by side, these two large works serve to contrast traditional indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants with the teachings imposed on indigenous youth by the residential school system.

below: There is a lot of detail in the two boards that get lost in a photo like the one above so here is a closer look at some of the photos in the collage above

“Facing the Monumental” is the title of the Rebecca Belmore exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It covers three decades of her work and includes photographs, sculptures, and videos of her performance art. Her art is more conceptual.

Belmore is an Anishinaabe woman from the Lac Seul First Nation. She spent her childhood in northwestern Ontario with her maternal grandparents where she spoke Ojibwa. For high school, she boarded with a white family in Thunder Bay. Many First Nations communities are too small to support a high school so students are sent to live elsewhere while they complete their education. It is a system with many problems. It’s probably fair to say that the whole “system” is problematic.

below: ‘Sister’ 2001. An ambiguous image – why does the woman have her arms stretched out? What is happening here?

below: “Tower”, 2018. A condo tower of shopping carts around a clay core – the carts symbolize the homeless.

below: And last, “Fringe” 2007. Like two of the three artworks above, Belmore uses the body to address violence against First Nations people, especially women. The image draws you in and repels you at the same time. You don’t want it to be real but there is the possibility that it is. If it makes you feel better, the diagonal scar is created using make-up and what looks like blood are strings of beads.

below: “Excuses injurieuses” 2007, by June Clark. One of her “Wine and Tea” pieces. It consists of the words Invective and Apology written over and over again starting from the top left corner and moving inwards toward the center. Instead of a spiral it is a pyramid shape. Perhaps it rises upwards, or perhaps it sinks down. It’s only 40cm x 40 cm so the words are tiny. I’d love to know how many words there are but I think that I’d be screaming profanities before I finished counting. What I can tell you is that the pair of words ‘invective apology’ is written 32 times on the outer square. If invective is a noun that means, expletive, or abusive language, what does ‘invective apology’ mean and is that the same as the french title, ‘Excuses injurieuses’?

June Clark was born in Harlem NY but moved to Toronto in 1968. At the moment, the AGO is featuring some of her work. For whatever reason, I was more attracted to the pieces with words.

below: More of Clark’s “Wine and Tea” series, 2007. Each one is a 40cm x 40 cm square and they are made with wine, tea and paper except for the one on the top left. It is “Poubelle Lune” and the circle is a rusted lid that fits in a circle that has been cut out of the canvas.

below: Close up of another of the eight squares, a collage of sorts, the silhouettes of two people (men?) in front of flags, one American and one ? Titled: “All Some Many”. If you look closely, you can see small words cut out of newspapers or magazines, some, all.

below: The next two photos are panels from “Formative Triptych” 1989/1990. The first one says “I always imagine that I never received anything as a child, but I do remember being disappointed that the chocolate Easter Bunny was hollow and then of course there was the red broom and dustpan set.”

below: The words say “I decided that I must become so famous and so recognizable so the they could never let me die in an emergency room.”

below: More collage and more words, this time it’s “Homecominghome”, words on paper towel. Words like proactive, dulled integrity, impotent, hostage, elation, victim, underwhelmed, illusion, and satisfied surface desires. These are only some, there were many more, each in their own little black frame. Paper towel, that stuff we use once and then throw away. Can we throw away the words? Or what is behind the words? Do we want to?

Actually there was a story about why paper towels were used – “…was made during a residency in New York City. I had been cleaning the space so it was empty aside from paper towels. It was a way of dealing with my emotions around how I felt living back in Harlem. Cutting out the words, I felt like I was captive but free – a sort of ransom situation, of calls for help and demands for responsibility. ” Quote taken from the words on the wall at the exhibit.

Words are fascinating.

June Clark’s work is on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario until December 2018.

And while we’re on the subject of words and the AGO, there is a whole room of panels like the one below. This is “Jack and the Jack Paintings: Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada”

Goldstein was an artist who published his memoirs in 2003, just before he committed suicide. Terada has taken words from the book and made them into 14 panels, sorry, I mean test-based paintings. They are Goldstein’s words? Or are they now Terada’s words? Whose story are they telling?

below: A large painting by Jack Goldstein (lightning) and four of the panels by Ron Terada.

is a mountain of positive messages stitched into a quilt-like artwork at the AGO. Fabric squares were decorated with pictures and messages and then hand stitched together. It is the creation of the AGO Youth Council, overseen by artist Ani Castillo.

An example of her work, black and white drawings with a little bit of whimsy and a lot of heart…. ‘Toronto in the Summer’ by Ani Castillo. Found online at Bored Panda.

Castillo worked with a group of young people (ages 14 to 24) over seven weeks and this was one of the results. I’m not sure how high it was, 4 or 5 metres perhaps?

Part of the AGO description of ‘This Mountain Loves You’ mentions that it is a tribute to, and a recreation of, Salvation Mountain in southern California.

Photo credit: by Kevin Key, found online at Los Angeles Magazine in an interesting article about the site and its creator, Larry Knight who worked on it for 30 years before his death in 2014.

As you can see in the above photo, Salvation Mountain is predominantly about God and Jesus whereas the fabric mountain proclaims a message of secular love, hope, and acceptance. Messages such as “trust in your abilities”, “love ahead!”, and “keep families together”.

Kusama’s polka-dot paintings were based on visual hallucinations she has experienced throughout her life, often based on “a miserable childhood as an unwanted child born of unloving parents.” These hallucinations often involve repeating patterns that engulf her field of vision, a process she refers to as “obliteration”. Painting has helped to keep her demons at bay, to obliterate her anxieties.

In 1968 she returned to Japan. In 1977 she checked herself into the Tokyo mental hospital where she has lived ever since. She has a studio where she works during the day but she returns to the hospital at night.

below: In an effort to keep the waiting times down, the AGO is letting three people at a time into the rooms. I’m not sure who the man is, but he seemed to put up with Joanne and I and our cameras! This was the first room in the exhibit and it was a bit of a let down – it was the only one that wasn’t impressive. Minor gripe – why not a mirror on the ceiling?

below: 30 seconds per visit. All timed – note the stopwatch!

below: Stars and planets into infinite. Small specks in the vastness of the universe. Obliteration of the self as we become just a very tiny, minuscule dot in the infinite of space. This exhibit is “The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” and is made with hundreds of hanging LED lights.

below: The words on the wall say, “The souls of millions of light years away”. This is the line-up for the room above. It was one of the shorter lines.

Kusama was born in Japan in 1929 and trained originally in traditional Japanese painting. One of the only American painters that she knew of was Georgia O’Keefe, having seen her work in an art book. She wrote to Georgia O’Keefe asking for advice on how to break into the New York art world. In 1958 she moved to New York City where she became part of the avant-garde art scene. She was into pop art and hippie counterculture. She organized a series of anti-war public performances featuring naked people who were painted with brightly colored polka dots.

below: This room was fun especially since I got to spend a few seconds alone in it. Dancing with pink balls.

below: Looking into “Love Forever” – a small hexagonal box with some mirrors on the outside and two small windows (peepholes!) as seen from the outside. This structure/exhibit was first shown in 1966.

below: Looking in the window…. It’s amazing what can be done with mirrors and lights in a small space. Mirrors combined with the technology of LED lights that can change colours with computer controlled programs made for an impressive display. An endless repetition of patterns.

below: Same room, different colours

below: Obliteration Room – multicoloured stickers that people have added to an all white room with all white furniture and accessories like wine glasses and dog dishes. As more people pass through, the more colourful the room becomes. The dots make it difficult to see the details in the room. Can you tell what is on the table?

Lots of shiny silver balls, like bowling balls with bling, and lots of paint on large canvases…. on the surface these two things don’t really have anything in common. But because they are two things that I saw at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I’m going to throw them together in this blog post. The shiny spheres are part of a display by Yayoi Kusama while the paintings I refer to are those by J.P. Riopelle and Joan Mitchell.

I saw the balls first. There has been a lot of hype and publicity for the latest AGO exhibit, “Infinity Mirrors” by Yayoi Kusama that just opened this past weekend. You’ve probably seen the all the red and white polka dots on the TTC and elsewhere around the city. Last week when I was at the AGO I noticed that another Kusama exhibit was in the works, one that didn’t involve buying a “hard to get” ticket. I was curious. I’ve seen some photos of “Infinity Mirrors” so I went with great expectations. Maybe that was my mistake.

below: “Narcissus Garden” consists of a large room with hundreds of shiny silver spheres laid out on the floor.

“Narcissus Garden” dates back to 1966 when it was a performance piece by Kusama at the Venice Bienalle. She walked among the balls, picking them up, and looking at herself in them. Here, at the AGO, they lie on the floor. The ceiling is reflected over and over again. It’s a dull ceiling. The balls are scuffed up. You might be able to lie on the floor to get a good look at the reflections bouncing around and that might be interesting. As it is, “listless” is the word that I would use to describe it. It’s the tag along mangy mutt to the main event.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to improve the presentation but, meh, no. Instead I went upstairs to take a second look at the lesser known “new” exhibit at the AGO, the marvellous Mitchell and Riopelle show, “Nothing in Moderation”. American abstract painter Joan Mitchell (1925 -1992) and Canadian abstract painter Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) met in Paris in 1955. For 24 years they were colleagues, friends, and lovers. This exhibit consists of more than 50 of their works on loan from collectors around the world and shown together.

below: Three degrees of interest in “Chasse Interdit (Hunting Prohibited)” by Mitchell, 1973. On loan from the George Pompidou Centre in Paris. The title of the painting refers to a ban on hunting – apparently Riopelle loved hunting and Mitchell loathed it.

below: The painting here is “Avatac” by Riopelle, 1971. It is acrylic paint on top of lithographs on canvas

below: This is a photo of a small part of the above painting. If you look closely, you can see the lithograph peeping through. I can see a small animal head near the top left (a cat?) and there seems to be another lower down.

below: One thing that intrigued me about Riopelle’s painting was that even though there is a lot of paint (palette knife?), there are still some places where the canvas is visible. Just small bits.

below: The details in the above photo are from the top left square in ” Mitchikanabikong ” by Riopelle.

below: The gallery was quiet on Wednesday morning. Both of these paintings are by Joan Mitchell. On the left, on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC is “Marlin”, 1960. The other is “Untitled” from 1961 and it is on loan from the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York.

Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry,
an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) was the 4th child of five, daughter of Joseph and Rosetta. Joseph, a banker, abandoned the family early on and was never mentioned again. Older siblings Walter and Stella married and moved out while the younger three girls, Ettie, Florine and Carrie remained in the same household with their mother until their deaths. They became known as “the Stetties”. They hosted salons in Manhattan and lived a life of leisure and artistic pleasure.

below: Family Portrait II, 1933, This painting has flowers, New York City references, and Florine Stettheimer’s immediate family portrayed in a theatrical setting/arrangement. These are themes that occur over and over again in Stettheimer’s work. Here Ettie is reading, Rosetta is playing cards, Florine is painting, and Carrie is playing hostess.

The Stettheimer children were born in Rochester NY. Between 1906 and 1914 Florine and her mother and sisters lived in Europe before settling in Manhattan.

A portion of the exhibit features a collection of designs for costumes for a ballet that Florine wrote while she was in Paris in 1912. ‘Orphee of the Quat-z-Arts’ (or ‘Revellers of the Four Arts Ball’) was based on a costume parade organized by Parisian art students and in it the main character, Georgette, encounters the ancient Greek minstrel Orpheus and a parade of mythical creatures, as she and her father walk down the Champs Elysee. The ballet was never performed.

below: One of 42 sketches and 9 relief maquettes, Georgette.

below: People, both men and women, were painted with elongated willowy shaped bodies.

Florine also wrote poetry and she liked to send her poems to her friends. In 1949 her sister Ettie published a book of Florine’s poems titled ‘Crystal Flowers’. This is one of the poems:

And Things I Loved a poem by Florine Stettheimer

Mother in a low-cut dress
Her neck like alabaster
A laced up bodice of Veronese green
A skirt all puffs of deeper shades
With flounces of point lace
Shawls of Blonde and Chantilly
Fichues of Honeton and Point d’Espirit
A silk jewel box painted with morning glories
Filled with ropes of Roman pearls
Mother playing the Beautiful Blue Danube
We children dancing to her tunes
Embroidered dresses of White Marseilles
Adored sashes of pale watered silk
Ribbons with gay Roman stripes
A carpet strewn with flower bouquets
Sevres vases and gilt console tables
When sick in bed with childhood ills –
All loved and unforgettable thrills.

below: The painting in the foreground of this picture is ‘Self-Portrait with Palette (Painter and Faun)’, 1910s. According to the words that accompany the painting, the faun behind her symbolizes a memory inspired by Russian ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky whom she saw perform in Paris in 1912. After the performance, Florine wrote: “Nijinsky the faun was marvelous. He seemed to be truly half beast… He knew not civilization – he was archaic – so were the nymphs. He is the most wonderful male dancer I have seen”.

below: Self-portrait, 1933

“For a long time
I gave myself
To the arrested moment
To the unfulfilled moment
To the moment of quiet expectation
I painted the trance moment
The promise moment
The moment in the balance
In mellow golden tones…
Then I saw
Time
Noise
Color
Outside me
Around me
Knocking me
Jarring me
Hurting me
Rousing me
Smiling
Singing
Forcing me in joy to paint them…”